Delaware River Viaduct
bridge in United States of America
The Delaware River Viaduct is a reinforced concrete railroad bridge across the Delaware River about two miles (3.2 km) south of the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, United States. It was built from 1908 to 1910 as part of the Lackawanna Cut-Off rail line. It is the sister to the line's larger Paulinskill Viaduct. The Delaware River Viaduct also crosses Interstate 80 on the east (New Jersey) side of the river and Slateford Road and the Lackawanna Railroad's "Old Road" (now Delaware-Lackawanna) on the west (Pennsylvania) side. Abandoned in 1983, it is part of an Amtrak proposal to introduce passenger service between Scranton, Pennsylvania and New York City, a distance of 135 mi (217 km).
The bridge is 1,452 feet (443 m) long and 65 ft (20 m) high from water level to the top of the rail. It is composed of five 150 ft (46 m) spans and two 120 ft (37 m) spans. It was considered the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world when it was completed in 1910.
Design and construction
Original plans called for the bridge to have a 1°30″ curve, which would have allowed speeds of 80 mph (130 km/h). However, the design was altered and the curve on the bridge was eliminated in favor of making it tangent (straight) with curved approaches—a 1°30″ curve on the New Jersey side and a 3°30″ curve on the Pennsylvania side.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Delaware River Viaduct” is bridge in United States of America. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Delaware, River and Viaduct, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5253344. Authority coordinates are 40.938, -75.106. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1910 and 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Delaware River Viaduct” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.